Hillary Clinton's book Hard Choices is the world's longest cv

Hillary Clinton has just published a very long and very earnest book that few people would read with any enthusiasm were it not for the fact that she is (almost) certain to be the next president of the United States of America. She should have been the American president for the last two terms, of course, but her party, the Democrats, chose to make history with a black man in the White House. The woman, Hillary, came a cropper in 2008, to Barack Obama. Barring a genuine surprise, she will come first in 2016. History will be made, a second time, with Hillary.

Hillary's latest book, Hard Choices, is unreadable in the conventional sense. It is not intended to be read, in fact, only parsed and burrowed through. It is not a book one starts in order to finish, nor even a book one starts at the very beginning. Instead, given the fact that this is her last formal statement before she declares her candidature for the presidency-the world's longest CV, in effect, at 632 pages-the book is best approached via the index. Index-peeking is a timehonoured way to glide through memoirs in Washington, and Hard Choices, with its 32-page index, is an index-readers' paradise.

Interested in Pakistan but bored rigid by Africa? Deeply into Richard Holbrooke, the swaggering uber-diplomat, but lukewarm on Aung San Suu Kyi, the politician-saint? Passionate about women's rights but left cold by nuclear proliferation? Go straight to the index, the author would approve. She is a pragmatic woman writing for pragmatic readers; writing, in fact, for reviewers and professional Hillary-watchers who will harvest this book as they would an orchard, looking for fruit that offers up a tasty bite, discarding fruit that is dull.

Illustration by Saurabh Singh

India, in the index, is given short shrift. Yes, it is there, referred to over several pages, but as with any book by an American politician, India is a sideshow, a byway on the road to grander things. Reading books by American politicians is always a sobering exercise for Indians: Show us your love, the reader says, through clenched teeth. Instead, he gets lines like this: "Another aspect of our pivot strategy was bringing India more fully into the Asia-Pacific scene." (Well then, how about a place for India on APEC, the forum for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, for starters?) But Hillary understands India, and her initial reference to India gets better. "Having another large democracy with a full seat at the table in the region could help encourage more countries to move toward political and economic openness, rather than follow China's example of autocratic state capitalism."

This seemingly anodyne observation is, in fact, a clear expression of her political preferences. India is a democracy-a capitalist democracy- with which America needs to feel at home. Her phrase, "autocratic state capitalism," is also telling: She hasn't sold her soul to Beijing the way Wall Street has. Having India "at the table" helps the cause of global decency, even though India's capitalism is still, largely, a form of state capitalism without the autocracy.

Hillary Clinton gets India. She gets India like no American politician has before, notwithstanding the fact that George W. Bush, President Obama's predecessor, is still seen as the finest friend India has had in the White House. Although India and the United States have never been closer than they were under Bush, he had no natural feel for India. Without wishing to belittle his embrace, one has to acknowledge that it was almost entirely platonic, based on a sense that two large and great democracies had no business being anything other than friends with each other. This echoes a description of India-US relations put to me by my old friend and old India hand, James Traub: "It feels like an arranged marriage pretending to be a love match."

Bush was embracing a concept of democratic communion, even as he pursued his project of democratic evangelism in West Asia. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is a cast-iron pragmatist. She has no illusions, especially about Pakistan, calling it (on page 173 of Hard Choices) a "nominal ally". This-nominal-may seem a simple word, but it means "in name only"; and it suggests an absence of illusion in Hillary's mind that will serve India well.

India, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, must prepare for Hillary Clinton. One way would be to order a couple of hundred copies of her book for distribution to the bureaucrats at the Ministry of External Affairs. Another would be to ask a senior BJP intellectual with sufficient command of the English language-Swapan Dasgupta, perhaps-to read the book and prepare a paper on "What Hillary Would Mean For India".

I see only an upside. After the disastrous ideological confusion of the Obama years, the world awaits clarity from Washington. And few capitals await clarity with greater eagerness-in fact, with an eagerness bordering on impatience-than New Delhi. Obama turned his back on Delhi, even as he turned his back on much of the rest of the world. His was a pet-peeve presidency: Healthcare reform at home, and the recession; China abroad, with a pinch of Russia and the Middle East. Nothing else mattered.

Hillary will not be so derelict when it comes to Delhi. As secretary of state, she paid India court, even as she was hamstrung by an administration that had no feel for India. (Has there been an administration in Washington since that of Richard Nixon that has been more unheeding of India than Obama's?) In this, clearly, she drew on her time as First Lady, when she and President Bill Clinton made the warmest foray into India of any American president before the younger Bush.

As her book demonstrates to those who have the patience to plod through it, Hillary is tough and wily, and not overly ideological. Given the calling of the last two American presidents, this last aspect would be a blessing. She is not loved in China or Pakistan, which is welcome from an Indian perspective; and she has been consistently tough on terrorism. Her arguments for a "rebalance" with Asia include, specifically, a strengthening of ties with India. She travelled to India frequently as secretary of state, and could be said to be more focused on the Indian subcontinent than any secretary of state in US history.

Witness her visit to New Delhi in May 2012, when Washington was ratcheting up its sanctions against Iran, much to India's consternation. (Iran was India's second-biggest crude-oil supplier after Saudi Arabia.) "I assured the Indians that, if they took positive steps, we would make clear that it was their decision, however they chose to characterize it. All we cared about was the end result, not beating our chest. That seemed to make a difference," she writes in her book.

Narendra Modi will not get a better American partner than Hillary Clinton. When the time comes for the two of them to transact, expect an explosion of pragmatism, and not just a little goodwill. They won't be friends, but they will play well together as careful patriots, eager to assure the other that an alliance is on offer.